Dr. Michael A. Schmidt Appears on “The Space Show”

Dr. Michael A. Schmidt Appears on “The Space Show”

Dr. Michael A. Schmidt, President and Chief Scientific Officer of Sovaris Aerospace, appeared on The Space Show with Dr. Thomas J. Goodwin, hosted by Dr. David Livingston. The show summary and audio link are found below:

“We welcomed both Dr. Michael Schmidt and Dr. Thomas Goodwin to this 1 hour 28 minute program to discuss their findings represented in their recent published & reviewed paper, “Personalized medicine in human space flight: using Omics based analysis to develop individualized countermeasures that enhance astronaut safety and performance.” I’ve posted this paper on The Space Show blog and I urge you to read it as I believe it will the way of the future for human spaceflight astronaut safety and enhancement. We started our discussion with Dr. Schmidt stating the problem(s) with astronauts in the extreme space environment, longer mission duration stress, plus other factors. Dr. Schmidt followed by Dr. Goodwin then explained and discussed personalized medicine in human space flight and the use of Omics analysis. Their work was also applied to the emerging space tourism industry as well as for suborbital missions.

“Regarding the suborbital flights, the interest seems to be more with the pilots who will be making many trips to space rather than the participant who will likely be doing it only once. Our guests put forth the reasoning for personalized space flight medicine, we talked about the capabilities to do this screening and the studies today, what will be near term and what we can expect over the longer term as technologies develop. Listeners asked about conventional mitigation strategies such as shielding, exercise, etc. Our guests pointed out that they were not talking about eliminating the usual mitigation strategies but tailoring needs to an individual’s DNA and genetic makeup since individual astronauts may have genetic and DNA differences that will respond better to a customized mitigation. We talked about varying degrees of DNA stability & unstable DNA. Much was said about the effects of RX medications and drug profiles. In our second segment, we talked more about the suborbital flights and the interest in the pilots due to their repeat flights.

We talked about targeted RX medications for an individual, how medications are metabolized & how that might actually differ in the astronauts leading to customization. Doug asked about a type of primate ISS experiment regarding fractionalized gravity. Listeners also wanted to know about adding mass and cost to a mission due to personalized space flight medicine, which as you will hear, was not the case. In the concluding comments, our guests pointed out that personalized space flight medicine was going to be the future of human space flight. Personalized and target DNA and genetic medicine is already starting to happen here on Earth, so its extension to space is only natural. Please post your comments/questions on The Space Show blog.”